Could Humanity Have Descended From Aquatic Apes?

Are we all on team aqua ape? The admittedly far-fetched theory posits that certain key traits hint that humanity’s ape ancestors spent significant time in the water. Complete Genomics writes:

A controversial theory that humans evolved from amphibious apes has won new support. The aquatic ape theory, whose supporters include David Attenborough, suggests that apes emerged from the water, lost their fur, started to walk upright and then developed big brains.

While it has been treated with scorn by some scientists since it first emerged 50 years ago, it is backed by a committed group of academics, including Sir David. The group will hold a major London conference next week.

One of the organizers, Peter Rhys Evans told the Observer that humans are very different from other apes, as we lack fur, walk upright, have big brains and subcutaneous fat and have a descended larynx – which is common among aquatic animals.

19 Commentson "Could Humanity Have Descended From Aquatic Apes?"

..from the water? as far as i know the theory rather refers to their nutrition habits close to the sea or lakes- lots of fish for heavy protein brain development food…prolly half-aquatic, referring to leftover swimming habits of babies

@Pur Singh. Your absolute certainty brings me joy but not in a way that you would like. If you are alive in 200 years and the theories you are defending are disproven by the majority where would you stand?

The same could be said of me. We know very very little and what we know is influenced by politics like everything else.
We are the smartest on this planet but looking at evolution we are probably not the smartest galaxy-wide.

How would it feel to be very stupid? To have got it all wrong? Even by human standards?

I’m not supporting the hypothesis but I would ask this: if you time-traveled back 100 years and could “correct” their thinking, how would a time-traveler visiting from 100 years in your future correct your thinking?

Tony Wright covers this very briefly in his book left in the dark, and i’d agree with his conclusions there that while her book does highlight some flaws/anomolies/questions in the orthodox model it isn’t a solid and well evidenced explanation in itself.

The theory that the biochemically rich materials used to build/fuel the development of our brains (aka food) for millions of years had an impact on this explosive expansion of our neural architecture seems far more plausible and even explains many of these traits Elaine mentions.

There is nothing unusual about primates exploiting aquatic resources for food. Wading bipedally in shallow water and even diving underwater for aquatic plants or shellfish in freshwater and in marine environments has been observed in many monkeys and apes and, of course, is common in primitive human populations. So its certainly not a question as to whether such bipedal aquatic feeding behavior in humans and other primates is possible.

The question is, is there any evidence that a primate species actually became– specialized– in such aquatic feeding behavior for an extensive period of evolutionary time and whether its possible humans could be descended from such primates.

The aquatic ape hypothesis was first conceived by Oxford marine biologist, Sir Alister Hardy, back in the 1920s. But he didn’t reveal his hypothesis to the public until 1960 during a lecture and then in an article in the journal, New Scientist.

Elaine Morgan first encountered the hypothesis after she read a synopsis of it in the Desmond Morris book, the Naked Ape. Then she wrote about it in her own book, the Descent of Woman in the early 1970s.

Basically, Hardy’s argument was that humans became bipeds and developed a thick subcutaneous fat because they needed to wade into shallow water in order to get access to shellfish.

I should note that aquatic wading is also one of the leading hypotheses for the origin of bipedalism in archosaurs (dinosaurs, birds, and crocodilians)

I think its pretty obvious that Oreopithecus evolved its bipedalism as a wading adaptation for exploiting aquatic plants during its 2 million years of isolation on the ancient Mediterranean island of Tuscany-Sardinia.

The lobulated medulla of the human kidney strongly suggest that humans were once specialized in consuming foods with an extremely high salt content. Since the African continent tends to be deficient in food resources with high levels of salt, human ancestors obviously evolved such kidneys along a marine coastline.

The fact that humans evolved particular characteristics for the same reasons that most other animals evolve those same characteristics really shouldn’t be all that surprising, IMO.

I guess this guy hasn’t seen many MMA/WWF/Nascar fans. Evolution hasn’t carried us as far from our origins as we’d like. Put a gorilla in a beer holding hat and some flannel and drop him in the middle of a crowd of Rangers hockey fans and he’d be damned hard to spot.